Ex Parte Xu et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 28, 2016

13603653 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 28, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/603,653 09/05/2012
34814 7590 03/30/2016
NXP-LARSON NEWMAN, LLP
6501 William Cannon Drive West
Austin, TX 78735
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Zheng Xu
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www .uspto.gov
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
NM45535TH-Cl 8890
EXAMINER
IQBAL, NADEEM
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2114
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/30/2016 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address( es):
ip.department.us@nxp.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ZHENG XU, SURAJ BHASKARAN,
RICHARD G. COLLINS, and JASON T. NEARING
Appeal2014-002695
Application 13/603,653
Technology Center 2100
Before JEFFREYS. SMITH, MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, and
AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges.
STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal2014-002695
Application 13/603,653
STATE~vfENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1-3 and 18-20. Claims 4--17 are indicated to be allowable if
rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base
claim and any intervening claims. We have jurisdiction over the rejected
claims under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We affirm.
THE INVENTION
The claims are directed to generating a trace message in response to
an event at an instruction pipeline of a data processing device. Abst. Claim
1, reproduced below, is representative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method, comprising:
generating a first trace message at a data processing device
in response to a first trace event; and
in response to determining an amount of space used to
store trace messages at a buffer is in a first relationship to a
threshold amount, including a timestamp in the first trace
message.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Edwards
Swaine
US 6,615,370 Bl
US 2009/0125756 Al
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Sept. 2, 2003
May 14, 2009
Appeal2014-002695
Application 13/603,653
REJECTION1
The Examiner rejected claims 1-3 and 18-20 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Swaine and Edwards. Ans. 2-5.
APPELLANTS' CONTENTIONS
1. Edwards' disclosed responses to a full buffer condition do not include
providing a timestamp in a trace message, as required by claim 1. App.
Br. 4--5.
2. Because Swaine does not disclose an amount of space used to store trace
messages among the events generating the disclosed timestamp, the
combination of Swaine and Edwards fails to teach or suggest generating
timestamps based on the amount of space used to store trace messages, as
required by claim 1. App. Br. 5.
3. Edwards only discloses detecting when a buffer is approaching a full
condition, i.e., is less than a threshold, instead of greater than a threshold
amount as required by claim 3. App. Br. 6-7.
1 Appellants argue the rejection of claims 1 and 18 collectively, and the
rejection of dependent claims 3 and 20 collectively. Separate patentability is
not argued for claims 2 and 19. (Merely restating with respect to a second
claim an argument previously presented with respect to a first claim is not an
argument for separate patentability of the two claims.) Therefore, we decide
the appeal of claims 1, 2, 18, and 19 based on claim 1 alone and the appeal
of claims 3 and 20 based on claim 3 alone. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv).
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Appeal2014-002695
Application 13/603,653
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellants'
arguments that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellants'
conclusions. We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by
the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 2-3)
and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner's Answer in
response to Appellants' Appeal Brief (Ans. 6-9) and concur with the
conclusions reached by the Examiner. We highlight the following for
emphasis.
In connection with contention 1, Appellants argue the combination of
Swaine and Edwards would not result in responding to buffer fullness with a
trace message including a timestamp as required by claim 1 but, instead ,
would result in a system that discards trace messages and separately
provides an indication to a processor when the buffer is full. App. Br. 5.
The Examiner responds by finding Swaine teaches including a timing
indication (timestamps) added to the stream of trace elements (trace
messages), while Edwards teaches a debug module that provides an
indication to a processor that the FIFO is approaching a full level, i.e., is
within a finite number of storage locations from the full level of the FIFO.
Ans. 7. Thus the combination of Swaine and Edwards teaches or suggests
that determining an amount of space used to store trace messages at a buffer
is in a first relationship to a threshold amount, as required by claims 1 and
18. Id.
Appellants' contention is unpersuasive for lack of evidence or
reasoning explaining why modifying Swaine to provide a trace message in
response to a buffer condition as taught by Edwards would result in the
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Appeal2014-002695
Application 13/603,653
omission of Swaine's time stamps from the resulting combination. At best,
any such argument is improperly based on the failure of Edwards to teach a
limitation for which the Examiner relies on Swaine, i.e., provision of a trace
message including a time stamp, and is therefore unresponsive to the
Examiner's findings. Furthermore, such attacks are unpersuasive because
nonobviousness cannot be established by attacking the references
individually when the rejection is predicated upon a combination of prior art
disclosures. See In re Merck & Co. Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir.
1986). Accordingly, Appellants' contention 1 is unpersuasive of Examiner
error.
Contention 2 is unpersuasive because, as with contention 1,
Appellants' argument is an attack on the references individually instead of
the combination, and it therefore fails to address the Examiner's findings. In
particular, Appellants' argument that Swaine fails to teach a set of events
leading to the generation of a timestamp including an amount of space used
to store trace messages ignores the Examiner's finding that Edwards, not
Swaine, teaches the argued buffer fullness event. Ans. 3.
For the reasons discussed supra, Appellants' arguments in connection
with the rejection of claim 1 are unpersuasive of Examiner error.
Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of independent claim 1 and, for the
same reasons, the rejection of independent claim 18 under 35 U.S.C. §103(a)
over Swaine and Edwards, together with the rejection of dependent claims 2
and 19 which are not argued separately.
In connection with contention 3, Appellants argue Edwards'
determination that a FIFO is within a finite number of locations of being full
is a determination that the amount of space at the FIFO is less than a
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Appeal2014-002695
Application 13/603,653
threshold amount, rather than greater than a threshold amount as required by
claim 3. App. Br. 6-7. The Examiner responds by finding that providing an
indication to a processor that the FIFO is approaching a full level would
have been understood to mean the amount of space needed is greater than a
threshold amount because the indication to the processor is provided before
the FIFO reaches a full level, thereby teaching the argued limitation. Ans. 9.
We agree with the Examiner. By describing an event based on
approaching a full level, Edwards teaches or suggests an event wherein the
amount of buffer space available is compared to a threshold amount
including the claimed relationship of being greater than the threshold
amount. Therefore, Appellants' contention 3 is unpersuasive of Examiner
error. Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of claim 3 and, for the same
reasons, the rejection of claim 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Swaine and
Edwards.
DECISION
The Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-3 and 18-20 is affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED
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